[Archivist's Note: Josh Neal died unexpectedly in December 2007.]
Josh Neal
432 Vidal Dr.
San Francisco, CA 94132
650 714 6229 (cell)
415 839 9531 (home)
UNIX Mercenary Seeks Adventure and Profit.
Skill set:
- Linux, Solaris, AIX and general UNIX System Administration
- Skilled in C programming, UNIX shell scripting (sh, bash, sed, awk, perl, python)
- In-depth knowledge of Apache, DNS (BIND) and Sendmail
- Well-versed in current SOAP, XML-RPC, WebServices/SOA best practices
- DBA experience in Oracle 8i, 9i, 10g environments as well as MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite
- Experience configuring and troubleshooting TCP/IP networks and Cisco IOS
based routers and switches
- Utterly unafraid of soldering irons, duct tape, and midnight hacks
Professional Experience:
Splunk, San Francisco CA
Senior Sustaining Engineer
November 2007 - Present
As a member of the Software Engineering staff, triage customer-reported issues
with the Support team; develop, test and release fixes to deployed software
branches. Develop regression test suites in Perl for unit and system testing
via TETware environment. Configure and maintain broad array of UNIX systems
for SQA lab. (Several Linux flavors, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, OS X)
Taos Mountain, Santa Clara CA
UNIX Systems Engineer (Consultant)
August 2007 - October 2007
Contracted by Taos Mountain for Reactrix Systems in an effort to regain control
of a sprawling international Media Network of embedded Linux kiosk systems.
Developed and deployed backup system based Veritas Netbackup on Solaris SPARC
for internal IT, including server backup policies and tape rotation. Also
deployed similar system based on Amanda for production Media Network MySQL,
Ruby On Rails, and remote access servers. Implemented custom perl scripts to
parse and consolidate Nagios alerts, analyze kiosk system and application log
files. Contributed sage advice re: network troubleshooting to NetworkOperations
team in times of great need.
Port of San Francisco / 21tech
San Francisco, CA
March 2007 - Deccember 2007
UNIX Systems Engineer (Consultant)
Contracted by 21tech for the Port of San Francisco as part of a project to
migrate production Oracle database from Y2K-vintage legacy system (Oracle
database version 7.3 / Oracle Financials 10.7 on AIX 4.3 RS/6000) to modern
environment (Oracle 10g database / Oracle E-Business Suite 11i.5 on RedHat
Linux Enterprise 4). RedHat Linux systems were hosted in a VMWare ESX cluster.
Project involved emergency maintenance of unmaintained, unsupported systems
abandoned by the vendors, provisioning and deployment of remote access systems,
development of environment porting plan, deployment of reliable backup system
(Veritas NetBackup in conjuction with Oracle RMAN), rewrite of custom KSH and
PL/SQL scripts, ad-hoc debugging of custom forms and reports.
Reactivity, Inc.
Belmont, CA
August 2004 - January 2007
Technical Support Manager, Primary Technical Support Engineer, Hardware Engineer
Provide all tiers of Technical Support 24x7 to end-users of Reactivity's
SOAP/XML Web Services security appliance. Familiar with troubleshooting and
debugging client applications developed for .NET (Visual Basic and C#) and J2EE
(WebSphere, WebLogic, Sun ONE). Leverage experience with UNIX networking
infrastructure to resolve customer issues. Developed and maintain customer
ticket tracking system, customer facing Support website. Responsible for
development of internal product documentation and Best Practices references.
Act as customer advocate to Product Management, Engineering.
In the Hardware Engineer role, transitioned Reactivity's appliance product line
from Dell 1U Xeon systems to Sun 1U and 2U AMD systems. Platform transition
required augmentation of RedHat Enterprise software base to include necessary
drivers, modification of existing SNMP monitoring infrastructure to use
OpenIPMI to report on Sun-specific hardware status information. Reactivity's
appliance makes heavy use of the nCipher nForce SSL accelerator/hardware key
store; a custom PCI riser card and cable assembly were developed in order to
mount this full-height card in the half-height-only Sun chassis.
IronPort Systems
San Bruno, CA
September 2003 - June 2004
Senior Customer Support Engineer
Provide Level 3 Technical Support to end-users of IronPort's proprietary
mail server appliances. Leverage experience with UNIX networking software
(BIND, Sendmail, Postfix) and network troubleshooting to resolve customer
issues. Act as liaison from Support to Engineering. Act as point of
contact for high-profile customers.
VA Linux Systems
Fremont, CA
May 2001 - September 2003
Hardware Engineer
Performed qualification testing of disk drives (SCSI and ATA) and RAID
subsystems on VA's Intel-based product line. Became intimately familiar
with SCSI logic analyzers, wire-level protocol troubleshooting. Identified
and resolved interaction issues with Linux kernel and vendor firmware.
After the close of VA's Hardware group in June 2001, remained on staff as
Chief Engineer and Head Bottle Washer of the Sustaining Engineering Department
to provide Engineering level support as part of the company's warranty
commitments to legacy customers. Duties included development of Linux
i2c/smbus driver for ServerWorks OSB4 SouthBridge, Linux driver for
Winbond/AsusTek Hardware Monitoring chipset, debugging and resolution of
strange field issues including thermal and power induced failures. Provided
ongoing training for 1st and 2nd level TechnicalSupport staff. Acted as
System Administrator/Software Developer for legacy manufacturing software
installation/quality testing environment.
Engineering operations in support of legacy hardware concluded in May 2002.
Remained on staff as Engineer without Portfolio, assisting the Technical Support
Department with support services for VA's Collaborative Development software,
SourceForge Enterprise Edition, as the primary Solaris reference. Became
intimately familiar with day-to-day administration of Postgres 7.x, Oracle 8i
and 9i database systems. Also act as Senior UNIX System Administrator for
the Information Technology department as a contact for network issues with
Cisco/Foundry based infrastructure.
VA Linux Systems
Fremont, CA
November 2000 - May 2001
Manager, Technical Support Department
Built in-house Support group of 15 people from the ashes of an out-sourced
helpdesk. Oversaw daily operations of Level 1 and Level 2 Technical
Support, Depot Repair and Field Service.
VA Linux Systems
Fremont, CA
February 2000 - November 2000
Lead Engineer, Technical Support Department
Provided Level 2 Technical Support to end-users of VA's Intel-based
Linux server equipment. Leveraged experience with UNIX networking software
(BIND, Sendmail, Apache) and hardware troubleshooting to resolve customer
issues. Acted as liaison from Support to Engineering. Acted as point of
contact for high-profile customers. Managed escalation path between internal
2nd level helpdesk and outsourced 1st level.
Cobalt Networks
Mountain View, CA
February 1999 - January 2000
Senior Support Engineer
Provided phone and email-based assistance to end-users of Cobalt's Linux
server appliances. Performed troubleshooting and configuration of BIND,
Apache, Sendmail, CGI/Perl scripts, TCP/IP networks, Samba/CIFS/NFS/AppleTalk
fileservers. Ministered to the clueless. Developed field fixes to defects
in Cobalt's web-based configuration system, then assisted Software Engineering's
defect resolution efforts.
Exodus Communications
Santa Clara, CA
July 1998 - January 1999
Network Control Center Engineer
Responsible for monitoring of data center equipment and hosted systems,
alerting of Engineering staff in case of incident. Provided troubleshooting
advise, sympathy to colocation customers during issues. Responsible for
maintaining legacy T1/2501 configurations, and resolving disputes with
telco circuit providers.
MacDaddy Computers
Modesto, CA
July 1996 - July 1998
Jack of All Trades
Wore nearly every hat in startup Macintosh sales/service shop: counter
and corporate sales, network engineer, Macintosh evangelist, Mac repair
technician, mail server administrator, database administrator/architect,
phone technical support.
NeXT Computer
Redwood City, CA
May 1995 - June 1996
Quality Assurance Engineer, NeXTadmin Test Group
Developed black and white box test suites for UNIX command line and
NeXT-UI based networking utilities (NIS/YP, NetInfo, DNS) with awk.
Assisted in development and rollout of enhanced internal bug tracking
system. Assisted in design of API-level compatibility test suite for
OpenStep cross-platform implementation.
Franklin and Marshall College
Lancaster, PA
September 1993 - May 1995
System Administrator, IT Department
Provided Macintosh support to faculty and staff. Managed 4 campus Macintosh
labs and the main AppleShare file servers for the college. Ported rdist to
the Mac in effort to gain control of lab machines. Administered AppleTalk
to IP gateway, Usenet news feed.
Professional Education:
Almost exclusively self-taught in real-world customer environments. Attended
following training circular:
GeoTrain's Introduction to Cisco Router Configuration, 11/98
GeoTrain's Advanced Cisco Router Configuration, 12/98
Education:
B.S. Computer Science, California State University, Stanislaus, 1998
Undergraduate work toward B.S. Mathematics, Franklin and Marshall College